


Loving Me's Like Chewing on Pearls

by Itgoeson



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, Hint: it's shiro, M/M, Mission Fic, Slow Burn, Swearing, Team Bonding, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trans Character, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 23:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9685982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itgoeson/pseuds/Itgoeson
Summary: “Good?” Keith asks as they break off to jog to the bridge.“Would you pilot Black for me if I wasn’t?”“I won’t disappoint you again, Shiro.”They don’t have time to stop, but Keith can tell he wants to. The doors loom ahead of them, so Shiro just looks over and shakes his head. “Not about disappointing me. You never could.”Keith wants to pretend he doesn’t get what Shiro’s saying, but there’s the problem. They never could pretend to not understand each other about things like this. Shiro is in love with Keith. He just wants to know that Keith will stand by him, support him, in whatever way he can.So he nods. “I’d pilot Black for you if you really needed me to.”---Or, the one where Shiro works through some issues, the team bonds, and foreign planets have their own wars and conflicts.





	

“So what’s going on with you and Captain Puppy?”

Keith scowls. “What.”

Lance shift his weight and adjusts his grip on the almost-clear, almost-metal container he’s holding. “You curl up in his lap and he melts. Ten minutes earlier, he’s ready to murder someone for getting gross with Pidge.”

“The creep deserved it. And I didn’t curl up in his lap.”

Lance holds up his hands and shakes his head. “Dude, I’m not saying that guy touching Pidge was okay. But Shiro literally almost beat the guy’s face in with his human hand. On the ship, the instant you’re around him, he falls asleep or laughs or does human things.”

They’d stopped at a junkheap of a planet earlier, a trading outpost of an old empire, earlier that day. Pidge had gone out with Shiro to look for extra ray converters. While Shiro had been distracted by haggling, a Lothsom had approached her. No one was clear on exactly what happened, but Pidge had shouted, Shiro had spun around to see a tentacle around Pidge’s waist, and by all accounts, kind of lost it. Keith, Hunk, and Lance had gotten there first, having been at the next booth over. They’d stalled a couple steps away, unsure how to break up the fight. Finally, Keith had called Shiro’s name softly, moved so he was in Shiro’s peripheral vision, and put a hand on his shoulder. Shiro’d stood up with a rasped “don’t touch people without asking” at the scaled alien and left them to go back to the ship.

They’re hauling their buys to the stockroom now, a giant hangar that doubles as a room for them to run diagnostics on the Lions and their own servers. Pidge had gone to find Shiro, Keith assumes, splitting off from the group when Lance asked her if she was alright.

Keith looks to Hunk for support, but he’s just got his eyebrows raised from his spot just behind Lance’s shoulder. He should’ve known better than to get trapped in a conversation when the other people are best friends. 

“So?” Hunk gently prods.

“So what?”

“Are you two dating?” Lance asks.

“No.”

“No?” Hunk and Lance say simultaneously.   
“It’s not like that.”

“Why not?” Lance pushes.

Fucking Lance. 

But, well. Shiro really had been close to killing a guy today. Keith sometimes wonders if he’s the only one who remembers Shiro from before space, when he was a polite kid with a well-hidden chip on his shoulder. There had been a reason Keith and Shiro had gotten along so well so fast on Earth. This is only out of character if you didn’t know Shiro had been half-wild on Earth and had it used against him by the Galra.

So Keith shrugs. “I . . . I slept around a lot. On Earth. Before Shiro went on his mission. I think it hurt Shiro, a little.” He sorts out the supplies and starts to load them into the boxes and bins Coran had spent hours labeling . . . a while back. Time in space was funny, and Keith didn’t often bother to keep track.

“Shiro had a crush on you?” Hunk interrupts, then blushes. “Sorry. It’s just. He’s not the most emotionally available guy. He’s nice but it’s hard to connect sometimes.” He taps his fingertips together like they’re wires and he’s trying to hotwire a car.

Keith grins faintly. It’s not a happy look on him. “Shiro loved me, I think. I might have loved him at the time, too. But I was fifteen and stupid when we met at the Garrison, and then seventeen and losing him.”

A beat of silence, then — “Wait wait wait. You? Keith ‘I don’t do emotions’ Kogane? Slept around? What the —”

Hunk elbows Lance in the side hard enough for him to huff.

“I was angry. I wasn’t in love with anyone I fucked.”

“Okay, well, I’m trying not to imagine you having sex,” Hunk breaks in, “and Lance is trying too hard to imagine you having sex, so maybe we can get to the part where this has to do with today? And how you get Shiro to stop being a murder-bot?”

“Don’t call him that,” he says sharply, then exhales. “Shiro and I, we have a history. We were best friends, back in the day. Before this.” Keith waves a hand at the Castle walls. “I probably just help to calm him down. We know each other.”

“Okay, one, you just admitted to having feelings. But only having to say his name and touch his shoulder to get him to stop wrecking a dude? Calming him down by sitting in his lap, enough that he’ll fall asleep, even in the control room? ” Lance points out, supplies forgotten on the floor. Hunk, already finished, folds his arms and tilts his head. “Because that’s happened three times since the P’tranga fight.

Keith’s tempted to pull a Shiro and start punching Lance. He rolls his eyes instead. “It was only in the control room once, and he’d been up for three days. I wouldn’t expect you to get it.”

“Because you’re both better? Older?” Lance’s eyebrows draw together, thunderous, his entire body tensing. 

Keith still, miraculously, refrains from punching him. “Because  _ you _ are better. Both of you.” He nods in their direction.

“What does that even mean?” Hunk asks.

“It means that, while Shiro was off being tortured by an imperialistic alien species and forced to kill others in gladiatorial combat, I became a feral desert child stranded and away from the last person on the planet who cared about me. Shiro and I get desperate. We’re dirty, in a way you guys don’t understand yet.”

“That’s not fair!” Lance interrupts, huffing. 

Keith takes a minute to imagine what he’d say to Shiro if he really did haul off and beat the shit out of Lance. Something like, “looks like you’re not the only one who can turn a face to oatmeal today,” probably. It’s not a good enough joke to go through with it, so he takes a deep breath instead. 

He shrugs and walks away. Some people aren’t worth arguing with. 

~~~

“Were you really going to kill that guy?” Keith asks into Shiro’s shoulder.

He’s pinned under Keith on a couch in what’s become the de facto living room in the Castle, a room with giant sofas that look more like thrones than anything else. He’d been reading data reports and star charts until Keith had settled in next to him and gotten bored, then draped his torso over Shiro’s. Now, his head is on Shiro’s chest, his arms wrapped around Keith and his head heavy against the back of the couch as he drifts off.

There’s a strained pause that Keith doesn’t worry himself over too much. Then, “Maybe. I’d like to think not, though.”

Keith nods. “You not sleeping lately doesn’t help.”

It’s blunt but honest, and Shiro doesn’t blame him for it. He sighs. “I know. I’m trying to get my head on straight. It’s not an excuse, but after all the things Black showed me when I was trapped in her matrix, after everything with Zarkon and feeling like the team turned on you . . .” he shakes his head. “It’s been unsettling.”

“Well, maybe try beating up battle bots instead of almost murdering creeps. Even if they deserve it.” It’s not the nicest thing to say, but neither of them can remember the last time they felt like nice people. 

“We kill people now, Keith. What’s a few more bodies to my name?”

Keith’s exhausted, suddenly. He feels like they’re strangers again somehow. All he has is his faith, though, so it’s what he falls back on. “I know you know where the line is, Takashi.”

They sit in comfortable silence for a while, just drifting.

“Lance seems huffy today,” Shiro murmurs after Lance and Hunk walk in, heads together and hands slapping at one another as their gestures and conversation overlap, only for Lance to take one look at him and Keith and turn around to leave. Hunk rolls his eyes and settles on the far side of the room, more to give them space than anything else, Keith imagines. 

“Maybe he’s just sleeping as little as you.”

“You seem huffy today, too. Because of me?”

“Don’t —”

Keith’s cut off by the alarms wailing, the walls flashing a dull red. He jerks and stills as Shiro rolls them both off the couch and flips them, Keith now struggling for breath as Shiro curls over him, side jammed against the base of the couch. 

He looks around wildly for a second, trying to figure out what’s got Shiro spooked. The alarms go off more than they don’t, these days, and it had been quiet for too long to not expect this. But Shiro’s maybe half all there, currently. Behind Shiro’s shoulder, Keith can hear Hunk asking them something, voice going high with confusion as they don’t move. He ignores it. There are better things to worry about, like the way Shiro takes a ragged breath, then another, then starts panting and gasping for breath. 

He wriggles a hand between them so it’s resting over Shiro’s chest and looks him in the eye. Shiro cuts off his hyperventilation quickly and harshly, dragging in a deep breath and letting it out slowly several times, mouth thinning and arms flexing around Keith when it shortens again or his throat closes up over a whine. 

Neither of them really have time for PTSD or panic, but this will have to do, he guesses, because after a while,  Shiro blushes but nods resolutely and gives Keith a hand up. 

Sometime in the last five minutes, Hunk must have gone on to grab his armor and check in with Allura, because the living room is empty. Together, they jog to their armor, helping each other with the straps in a flawless dance they’ve perfected after too many emergencies. “Good?” Keith asks as they break off to jog to the bridge. 

“Would you pilot Black for me if I wasn’t?”

“I won’t disappoint you again, Shiro.”

They don’t have time to stop, but Keith can tell he wants to. The doors loom ahead of them, so Shiro just looks over and shakes his head. “Not about disappointing me. You never could.”

Keith wants to pretend he doesn’t get what Shiro’s saying, but there’s the problem. They never could pretend to not understand each other about things like this. Shiro is in love with Keith. He just wants to know that Keith will stand by him, support him, in whatever way he can. 

So he nods. “I’d pilot Black for you if you really needed me to.”

He realizes, a second too late, that even with the doors whirring open for them, the others could probably hear his last reply. 

Well, too late, he decides, as Pidge and Lance both blink dumbly at him, and Hunk clears his throat and goes back to looking at the view screen with Allura. 

Shiro squares his shoulders. “What are we looking at?”

“An approaching vessel. They seem to be pirates, by their designations, and pirates always travel in packs. I hate to use the warnings so often, but we really don’t have enough people on this ship.”

“Since when do pirates travel in packs?” Pidge asks.

“That would be because of federal mandates,” Coran announces, breezing in from behind Keith and Shiro. “Off the beaten path, so to speak, vessels are supposed to stick together or call for an escort if they’ve got a Galran seal of approval. If they do, they’re carrying something important. And pirates usually only care about what’s on those ships. So it makes more sense to ambush larger parties with more pirates than it does to pick off small, isolated ships.”

“Wouldn’t they just pass us by then?” she asks, glancing at Lance, who’s nodding in agreement.

“How often do you think a ship this big comes through their territory?” Allura reminds them. “I’d be surprised if they didn’t throw everything they’ve got at us.”

Hunk shifts from foot to foot. “Can’t we reason with them? Try to raise their signal and tell them we’re not Galra?”

“They don’t care, they’re pirates!” Lance yells.

“Hunk’s got a point,” Shiro finally says, a frown on his face. “We don’t want any more bloodshed than necessary.”

He and Keith both studiously ignore Lance scoff and Pidge’s raised eyebrows.

Allura nods. “Coran, would you do the honor of hailing them? In the meantime, Paladins, it would be best to go to your Lions. Just in case.”

Shiro nods, gives a military-sharp turn on his heel, and marches out. Pidge falls into step beside Keith a second later, shadowing Shiro. In another heartbeat, Lance and Hunk’s tread joins them, five pairs of boots whispering their way to the hangars in what would be the dungeons of a castle on Earth. Keith tries not to think about it too much.

They split off to enter their own Lions. Shiro hesitates, half-turning towards Keith and waiting a beat until everyone else has passed. “I don’t want to disappoint you again either.”

Keith reaches forward to squeeze his human wrist and goes to settle into his Lion. They’ve got an entire comet tail's worth of mistakes and collateral damage behind them, things that made them better but still hurt. Some things are better accepted in silence.

The wait to hear from Allura about the pirate situation is uneventful after that. When she announces that the pirates would very much like to take their chances with a giant, highly militarized ship, it’s nearly a relief. Waiting is hardly any of their strong suits. 

Shiro’s steady voice cuts into the paladins’ cockpits. “Right. Get out fast and try to take out the ships by yourselves. Take the points you would in Voltron to avoid stumbling over each other. On Allura’s mark.”

“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Lance asks. No one has to ask why he’s questioning Shiro, but it’s clear even he isn’t comfortable voicing his doubts.

“I trust Allura’s judgement, and yours,” Shiro tells him. “I’m sorry about this morning — sorry to all of you. I can’t promise that it won’t happen again, but I can promise that I’ll try my best to avoid it. But we’re paladins of Voltron. None of us are civilians anymore. I’m sorry about that, too. We were trained for this, though, whether or not we think of the Garrison as a military operation or not. And we all know that what we do matters. So when Allura tells us to go, we need to scatter and take them out fast, to avoid anyone knowing about our whereabouts. If anyone has a problem, now’s the time to voice it.”

Silence. 

Lance whines. “C’mon, man. You know I trust you. It just freaked me out this morning.”

“He likes to know things,” Hunk cuts in cheerfully. “A giant gossip. So you wrecked a guy this morning. He should’ve known better than to go near someone who didn’t want to be touched.”

Pidge coughs. “I feel like you’re all forgetting that I can take care of myself. But, if we ignore that, I appreciate the gesture, Shiro. Also, if I really wanted, I could have stopped Shiro. Slimy assholes who try to buy me deserve it though.”

“Uh, Pidgey,” Lance says. “I was not about to risk life and limb to stop the Shiro Shakedown.”

“Are you or are you not about to risk life and limb fighting an entire fleet of pirates?” she asks incredulously. “Shiro would never hurt you. He’s the least of our worries.”

Her anger settles something in Keith. He thinks, sometimes, the team forgets that Shiro was made into a weapon, but sometimes he worries that that’s also all the team can remember. They forget that his loyalty is going to get him killed. That it already almost has. 

They don’t forget to wipe out the pirates that concentrate too hard on the Castle’s weakened shields after their last fight, swooping in from under and behind. The battle doesn’t last long, and they’re all showered in time for a late and exhausted dinner of leftovers. 

~~~

Keith wanders over to the training deck, cold and grumpy. 

“You were supposed to be in bed hours ago,” he calls when the doors swish open. It’s been hours since dinner, and Shiro of all people has been doing too much in the past couple day-cycles.

Shiro, mid-training sequence, grunts.

He stills when he decimates the training droid a second later.

“Sorry.” He wipes at his forehead with his wrist and stretches. “Didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Not about me, Shiro.”

When Shiro doesn’t acknowledge that, Keith takes a moment to look at him, study him, and all the ways he’d changed while he was gone. “You’re shoulders got broader,” he says softly. “You look even sturdier. Like you could crush me. 

“I could always crush you,” Shiro tells him, but his lips are curling up at the edges. “I think they did something, when they gave me the arm. Increased my testosterone or something. That and the constant fighting. I got a lot bigger.”

“You look good.” 

Keith says it quietly, but there’s nothing but naked appreciation in his words. He doesn’t tell  him enough how gorgeous he is. 

“I’ll go to bed soon. Just needed to work today out of my system.”

Keith nods. “You’ve been through worse,” he points out.

He hesitates, rubs the knuckles on his human hand. Clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“So. Is something else bothering you?”

Shiro huffs a laugh. “This isn’t like you.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Keith closes in on him until he’s just a couple feet away, within reaching distance, and waits until Shiro meets his eyes. “I don’t like this,” he gestures between them in a way that clearly means  _ feelings _ , “any more than you do. But it’s good for us.  _ We _ could be good for us.”

Something filters over Shiro’s face, turns it impossibly distant. “We’re trapped together in space. I think you should take a bit to think about why you’ve been acting this way. About what you want.”

“I want you!” Keith raises his voice, not enough to be a yell but close. He doesn’t like feeling so exposed, but Shiro’s never needed him to be so explicit before.

“You want to be close to someone,” he says sadly. Keith hates it. Hates his sad voice and lonely face. “And I know that physical affection can be nice and . . . make you feel better. But don’t do this for my sake.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means you’ve been all over me since the last time I disappeared,” Shiro says, jaw tightening. “Stress is hard on everyone. I’m more than happy to be whatever you need, but I need you to know what it is that you need, and why you need it.”

He crosses his arms, frustrated. “Shiro, will you cut the shit? You’ve always loved me. So just talk to me!”

Shiro shakes his head and cuts his gaze to the side. “I had another three levels to go on the training bot.”

Only Allura can max out on the training droid — or, at least, only Allura had done so in front of the Paladins. He wonders what else Shiro has been hiding from the rest of the team. 

“We’re so quiet,” Keith intones softly, “that I forget that it’s hard to know us.”

Shiro looks over at him, brows furrowed. He shakes his head and explains. “I mean. What does the team not know about us because we forget to say it? You should start on the next level.” He adds, nodding to the control panel and taking a step back.

There’s a tense silence for a moment. Then Shiro calls out the order and turns back to the center of the ring. “You should keep talking, though. If you want.” He sounds reluctant, but Keith takes it for the peace offering that it is.

“I mean. You used to draw in all your notebooks. Awful pictures of imaginary planets and aliens that looked like sad dragons, until it started getting better-” A creak, and the droid squares off with Shiro. They each take a step to the left, circle one another. Keith keeps going, eyes trained on the fight, “-and better, and then one day you just. Stopped.”

The droid tries to grapple with Shiro, gets him on his back before he flips it off and kicks out its legs when it tries to stand. “Mom found them,” he gasps out, then dodges a fist.

“Right. But how many people know that your mom is pretty much top brass?”

Shiro kicks up and out, takes a fist to the thigh, and pins the droid in a chokehold with his Galran hand. “Doesn’t matter in space.”

“Who we are still matters. It has to.”

The droid beeps defeat, and the lights turn from clear to blue. “Initiate next level.”

“I grew up in Texas. I tried to lose my accent forever.”

The droid disentangles itself, stands, and steps back, next to a second droid that drops from the ceiling. Shiro centers himself with a deep breath and clenches his jaw before deliberately relaxing. “It was cute.”

“Right. You made the officer track ridiculously quickly. I don’t think they know how young you are.”  _ Thump-thump-da-thump. _ A series of punches have Shiro and the bots weaving together in a blur of motion, Shiro staying low to the ground where he can. Keith isn’t sure who landed what hits, only that there was contact and then they’re breaking away from one another, analyzing.

“Older than I should be,” Shiro grits out. A solid hit to his back has him rolling out and away.

“They don’t know I’d do anything for you.” His words are almost lost under a resounding thud as Shiro throws the first bot into the second. “I just don’t know the words to get the feeling right.”

Shiro rips a staff from the weapons rack on the wall and lunges over to the bot trying to get off of the one crushed under it. He stabs the blunt end through both bots’ chests, pinning them to the mat. He pants for a minute, head ducked and shoulders tense. When he lets go of the staff, his hands are shaking. 

He’s crying, Keith realizes with a feeling of seeping horror. Silent tears tracking down his cheeks, parallel lines to the drops of sweat running down his temples. “I don’t know how to be what you need, Keith. I don’t even know what you need. But I do know that love isn’t enough. Stop settling and figure out what you want.”

Keith would like the record to show that he’s never seen Shiro cry before. So maybe it’s not entirely his fault when he’s frozen to his spot, hands hovering uselessly in front of him and jaw dropped, as Shiro tells the computer to end the training sequence and stalks out of the training deck. He stands still as another bot comes to collect the two on the floor, pulling out the staff and patching them up enough to get them moving. It all happens honey-slow, horrific and tinged purple, like some sort of witchcraft-induced dream. 

When he finally shakes himself out of his daze enough to move, Keith still can’t quite believe what just happened. He does note with some relief that the purple tinge wasn’t just a fear-induced hallucination, but the resting color of the lights. The motion sensors must be attuned to human-like life, because they activate when he moves, turning the room back to a more yellow lighting as he stumbles back to his room.

His life must be over, because he just  _ made Shirogane Takashi cry _ and an angel or whatever force of good there is in the universe has not yet come to kick his ass for it.

It takes him ages to get to sleep that night, but when he does, it’s an empty and dreamless prowl through unconsciousness that leaves him cold but dreadfully alert when he wakes.

~~~

The living room is packed, a kind of warm that only comes from being around people you love. Allura is draped over one throne-sofa, legs kicked over the back and head on the cushions Lance is laying on one, arms thrown above his head and Hunk trapped under his calves. Pidge is sprawled on the ground next to Hunk’s legs, looking determined to figure out what’s got her newest Galran triangle-robot that she assures everyone is named Ted zooming in excited circles and trading jokes with Hunk. Shiro is curled up with an Altean book in his lap, staring absently at the wall. Keith is somewhere pointedly not in the room, although Shiro doubts anyone but him can tell that there’s any tension between them.

Lance is, predictably, talking loudly about a cute alien he saw on their latest market-run, a female with obsidian skin, a sharp smile, and the freshest fruit-like plants they’d seen in ages. Hunk rolls his eyes but mostly ignores him in favor of ruffling Pidge’s hair and prodding gently at Ted. About the time that Lance starts to muse on whether or not females shave in space, and after Allura has rolled her eyes, muttered something about humans in a disgusted voice, and left, Shiro stands up and nudges Pidge with a toe. “Want to look at that in the hangar?”

She shrugs and follows him. Ted buzzes along behind them slowly, a looping path that manages to go forward even as it still trundles along in circles. 

When they get to what has unofficially become Pidge’s hangar, complete with half-finished projects everywhere but also their entire stock of extra mechanical supplies, Shiro settles on the opposite side of Pidge’s work table. Neither of them notice Keith tucked away behind a shelving unit, searching for a screw he could use on Red to check in on the rattling sound coming from a rear panel in the cockpit.

“Pidge,” he hears Shiro finally say. His hand is on Pidge’s shoulder, stopping her from running diagnostics on her haywire bot floating in lazy figure eights between them. His face isn’t just serious, it’s sad and uncomfortable. In truth, the most uncomfortable Keith’s seen it in years, the other night aside. It doesn’t stop him from continuing, though, and Keith feels his chest constrict. 

“What Lance was saying —”

Pidge takes advantage of Shiro’s pause to butt in. “He’s an idiot, I know.”

“But he also doesn’t mean it. Or, well, maybe he does,” Shiro admits with a sheepish grin. “Lance is an idiot about sex sometimes. What I’m trying to say, though, is that anyone who wants to be naked with you — or intimate, because intimacy doesn’t require nudity, that’s not the important part — I’m fucking this up.”

She snorts, tries to smother the sound, and then doubles over laughing. “I’ve never heard you swear before. You sound like such a dad trying to talk about how the birds and the bees work.”

Shiro grins and scrubs a hand through his hair, trying to fidget out his embarrassment. “Thanks. You need to hear this though.” He looks steadily at Pidge until she calms down. They’re both grinning softly, Shiro with his forearms braced on the table between them, back arching down. It puts him on her level without being too obvious.

“Lance was talking about women like it mattered what they look like. It doesn’t. When you love someone, or even just respect them as a person, it doesn’t matter what they look like. Where you shave, how much you shave, that sometimes there’ll be weird noises, or bumps and stretchmarks and fat or muscle or scars in places you think are ugly on you. None of that is a bad thing. None of it matters. And not just to the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, but anyone you want to do anything with. However soon or far off the time is when you decide to get involved with someone."   


“Running out of steam yet?” she snarks, but her eyes are wet and she won’t stop twisting the loose wires from a failed project together in her fingers. She sniffs, and Shiro rounds the table to wrap her up in a hug.

“And let the patriarchy win? Not a chance.”

Pidge laughs wetly into Shiro’s chest. When she looks up, there’s a shimmer of tears just starting to run over. It makes her look like a cat that just got sprayed with water.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cry, I just.” She stops and doesn’t even try to finish her sentence.

He runs his Galra hand over her hair over and over again. “Don’t be sorry. Turns out, it’s not just the world that’s terrible to people not born as men, it’s the entire universe.”

She sniffs and swallows, but doesn’t comment on his phrasing. “Statistically, there’s got to be a utopia around here somewhere.”

They both breathe quietly for a minute. “Maybe,” Shiro finally whispers. “If anyone could find it, it’s you.”

“You really think so?”

“You’re the most incredible girl I’ve ever met. And I know Allura.”

She chuckles a little. “As if I could ever be Allura.”

“Well, maybe you’re both just different. Hard to compare, at least.”

Pidge dips her head and grins. Something flashes across her face, and she purses her lips before asking. “There were rumors, about you, at the Garrison. Not often, but occasionally, people would say something a little off. And, I mean, you’re. Uh. Not what I always expect.”

“Ah, I’m trans.” He nods and rocks them from side to side. “I got top surgery a couple years before Kerberos.”

“Oh, so the eyeliner—”

He nods. “A hold-on from before I was out. I missed it when I first transitioned. Then I made officer, and it wasn’t like anyone could do all that much about me wearing it but talk. So I started wearing it again.”

Pidge laughs hysterically. “I can’t believe we’re trapped half in each other’s brains when we form Voltron and we never knew.”

“You’d be surprised what you can hide from people,” Shiro says quietly.

Keith stands slowly and inches his way out the door. He doesn’t want to make either of them uncomfortable. As he sneaks out the door, he hears Shiro prod at Pidge. “Now let’s see what’s gotten into this thing. It’s going to drive us all crazy with worry.”

“Like the family dog,” Pidge jokes back weakly.

Keith thinks about punching Lance in the face again. Resolves to just bring up the fact that he’s kind of a dick about gender sometimes to his face. Lance means well, even if he forgets to censor himself sometimes. 

~~~

Hunk appears at the door right before Shiro finishes his morning routine. He stays steady, tipping his head slightly to the side in invitation before continuing with his routine. Wiping off his face, moisturizing, applying eyeliner; Shiro hums quietly as he moves. Hunk’s probably just here to tell him that he made, or will make, breakfast anyway.

“So are you, like, still a guy, or questioning, or?”

Shiro pauses in applying his eyeliner for the day and stares at Hunk. “How did you get in here?”

“Oh, Keith told me to come in. He was on his way out of his room. Well, he waved at your door when I tried to talk to him, and then punched in your code and looked grumpy when I kept trying to talk to him. I think he thought I’d stay in the living room? But I was going to make breakfast because I already finished my morning workout and you were taking a while.” He grins in apology.

“And you wanted to know about my gender before you could eat space goo?”

“No! No. I got distracted. I wanted to know if you wanted breakfast too.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow at Hunk before raising the brush to his eye again, carefully marking out ticks to make a curve for his eyeliner. “There are no genders in space, Hunk. I refuse to believe that the stars care about a gender binary and the social construct of gender roles. I do, however, believe in breakfast.”

Hunk had kind of known that Shiro would want breakfast. He’s yet to see him turn down a meal. 

He raises his hands. “I’m sorry dude. I thought I’d ask, but I totally get how that would be insensitive. I’m really sorry.”

At that, he gives him an easygoing smile as he flicks on the last of the eyeliner. “We’ve almost died together more times than I can count. It’s not offensive. But you bake. That’s not the most masculine thing. Are you queer?"

Shiro caps his eyeliner and leans a shoulder against the wall, considering. Hunk forgets sometimes how deadly Shiro can be. It makes sense, though. He thinks about what Keith said, about how Shiro had been forced to fight, how he goes into some kind of headspace during fights when they’re all bundled together in Voltron, how he transforms during hand-to-hand combat when they’re fighting someone on-world. He’s terrifying without trying. Hunk is equally impressed and unnerved.

“No, not really, I would say no.”

“Good to know, Hunk. You can always trust me, you know that?”

“Right,” Hunk mumbles, a little lost. Shiro claps him on the shoulder and moves past him, out of the bathroom and towards the door that leads out into the Castle hallways.

“I am, though. Just to be clear,” Shiro tosses over his shoulder, strolling out the door. “I’ll grab breakfast after training, if you wouldn’t mind just leaving some out for me.”

“Anytime!” Hunk yells as the door closes, leaving him alone in Shiro’s room. He squints at his surrounding as he shifts uncomfortably. “Well, this has been a fun Emotional Honesty Hour,” he grumps.

He shrugs and makes his way to the kitchen, only to see Keith dazedly staring at the replicator in his workout sweats when he gets there.

“Keith buddy?” he asks. 

It makes him startle, then blink slowly. Hunk moves to shoulder him lightly, just a nudge. When he does, though, Keith rests his head on Hunk’s shoulder. “Food?” he asks blurrily. 

“Yeah, coming right up. Sit on that barstool for me?”

He nods and plops down, giving Hunk enough room to make his way around the kitchen. “So, I was thinking I’d help Pidge run diagnostics on all the Lions today, then get around to finally upholstering the inside of Yellow. Her last Paladin was at least two feet taller than me, a species she translated as something like  _ Mintrarian? _ I don’t know. I didn’t push her for images, she seemed sad about it. Anyway, it pretty much gives me a migraine after every fight, so I’m going to redesign the workflow of the cockpit, probably weld a new chair. I got the sense she’d tell me if I messed up something to do with how she works, or how we’d work together.”

He’s chattering, but Keith always seems to relax when he talks without expecting him to reply, so Hunk refuses to feel bad about it. Besides, he’s starting to perk up and look a little interested by the end, tilting his head when Hunk trails off to put breakfast in the Altean version of an oven to finish cooking. 

“You’re close with Shiro, right?” Hunk finally asks, getting at what he’s been mulling over since Shiro left him.

Keith blinks, and somehow it perfectly conveys a sense of  _ “damn right we’re close, and you know it, so why are you asking stupid questions.”  _ He’s very impressed by Keith’s nonverbal communication skills, honestly. 

“I’m just asking because, well. So this morning, after I saw you, right, Shiro was putting on his eyeliner and he said. Something.” He glances around to make sure no one else is within earshot, then hesitates. What if Shiro didn’t want that to be common knowledge? What if Shiro had trusted Hunk and he’s about to break that trust? He can’t do that to Shiro. He rolls his shoulders and shifts from foot to foot.

Keith props his chin on his fist. “Unless it was something about his time with the Galra, I know everything about Shiro. Nothing you’re going to say is going to surprise me.”

“It’s not surprise, I just don’t want to betray his trust. But I think I need advice?”

Another blink, another head tilt. 

“Right. Do I need to change pronouns for him? Like, he walked away before I could ask this morning, and I don’t want to be rude, so I figured-”

“Why the fuck would you call Shiro by different pronouns,” Keith says sharply. It can’t really be called a question, too flat and nearly angry. 

“Because he said that the gender binary doesn’t exist in space and also that he’s queer?” Hunk answers, too taken aback to really worry about giving away Shiro’s personal life. Besides, the two of them are pretty close.

Keith relaxes. “Oh. Nah. Shiro just likes to live his life, and he likes wearing makeup. Back home, some guys would give him a hard time about it. I think he likes that none of us do.”

“So . . . it wouldn’t be weird to compliment him on it?”

“He would love that, Hunk.” He grins —  _ grins _ , at this time of morning, which is a minor miracle for Keith — and Hunk relaxes as the timer goes off for breakfast.

“Thanks, Keith. And it’s definitely male pronouns?”

“100% sure, dude.”

“Well, thanks. And thanks for answering me before food. I know you’re a zombie in the morning before you eat.”

“Zombies?” Allura asks, striding in. She looks around, gaze resting on Keith a beat too long before sniffing her way over to the dish Hunk sets down on the counter. “Is this . . . fair game?” she tries out the colloquialism. 

He laughs. “Yeah! Pidge is coming, she said she’d be here soon. We’re going to make lunch together if you want to join later.”

Keith leaves them to it, snagging the plate Hunk dishes up for him on his way over to the training deck. It’s piled high, enough for him and Shiro to snack on without getting sick while they do their morning ritual of light sparring, cardio, and stretching. Shiro never really says it, but Keith’s caught him wincing, moving gingerly on the days he doesn’t start out the day with gentle exercises. 

He’s kind of terrified to see what an x-ray of Shiro’s body would look like.

When he gets to the training deck, Shiro is already started on what looks like a blend of yoga and martial arts. He’s following an Altean training sim, and that’s horrific enough to think about on its own. Alteans are denser than humans, more muscle in less space, even ones that didn’t train as hard or often as Allura. 

Shiro flicks a glance at him when he enters, tips his chin in acknowledgement, and then stares for a minute. Keith holds the plate up as a peace offering. “I brought food.”

“I told Hunk that I’d drop by later.” Shiro looks away to change poses, a long step sequence that draws out the muscles in his thighs and back. Or it would, if Shiro wore less clothing when he knew he might be seen by someone other than Keith.

“Yeah. But you’ll be in here forever if we let you.”

“So you’re enabling me?” Shiro cocks his head and grins faintly. Keith counts it as a win.

“More like incentivizing you to take care of yourself.”

That was definitely the wrong thing to say. Shiro tenses as he pushes himself into a handstand, legs moving along with the sim. It’s unfair, really, how good he looks, and how his shirt is riding up, but Keith ignores it, focusing instead on Shiro’s frown.

“Don’t do that, Takashi,” he hazards. They’re alone, and he figures he can get away with the familiarity. “I didn’t mean that you were letting anyone down. But you aren’t taking care of yourself, and one day that will affect the team.”

“Well, if you’re going to bring the team into it,” Shiro grouches. But when he curls down and out into a push-up position, he deflates a little. “I’m trying. I honestly am. You don’t have to worry about me. I survived a gladiator fight against an alien with more tails than teeth — and it had three mouths.”

“That’s good enough for me.” Keith sits on the floor to watch Shiro finish his sim, munching on the bits of Hunk’s breakfast he knows Shiro doesn’t like. 

The silence is almost meditative. The quiet is more comfortable than it’s been in days, alone and a little cold from the air conditioning in the training deck. When Shiro’s worked up a light sweat he shakes himself, not unlike a cat, and moves to sprawl on his stomach next to Keith and breakfast. 

“Hunk is an actual miracle. How does he wake up so early and do things?” Shiro’s eyes are glazed and awestruck as he looks at the food. 

Keith snorts. “You do too.”

“Yeah, but I hate it and secretly think about killing people when I’m up too early. Hunk just makes food with extra love baked in.”

“Alright, captain edgelord, we get it, you don’t like mornings, now eat.”

Shiro takes the flat eating utensil he offers and pauses right before shoving a giant bite in his mouth. “No, really. I had this recurring sleep-deprived fantasy about hitting LT Shane with the extra measuring tape and pliers he always carried around until he admitted that he didn’t really  _ need _ a second set of eyes at o-six-hundred on his biometric calculations. I almost murdered him when I got that shift. And then every morning after that for the next six months.”

Keith snorts a laugh. “Being that angry is my job.”

He looks down to see Shiro grinning wolfishly. “I didn’t realize that blood splatter could be beautiful until the idea of it got me through six hour shifts in his lab.”

He pushes the food into his mouth until his cheeks are puffed out with it, then twists until he’s flopped on his back. It looks uncomfortable, and there are at least three too-loud snapping sounds from Shiro’s spine popping as it settles onto the straight line of the floor, but it’s cute nonetheless.

They’re not okay. Things aren’t quite normal between them, although Keith guesses that it might be because he ruined both of their lives by making Shiro cry. But they’re better than they have been in a while, the air cleaner between them. He’ll take what he can get.

~~~

“Who the fuck let Shiro get tipsy?"

Hunk freezes at the anger simmering in Keith’s voice. “Uh? He was just drinking what the queen told him to. A toast, or something?”

Keith is, currently, about to crawl out of his skin, in panic or embarrassment or  _ something _ , sitting next to Hunk at a long banquet table, far enough away from Shiro that he hadn’t been watching his drinks, but close enough that, when he’d gone to drink the stuff in front of him and realized it was alcoholic, he’d immediately locked onto Shiro. And, oh, that was a mistake. He looks frantically back at Hunk, and then over to Shiro again — Shiro who is now letting his gaze wander over to Keith, then snapping back to the royal family in front of him, then back to Keith. 

Next to Shiro, Allura and Coran are smiling, charming their way through the conversation, no doubt picking up for Shiro’s lack. He sees Shiro smile sheepishly, probably admitting that the drinks are actually a kind of almost-drug for humans. The queens at the head of the table laugh softly — which, for them, is kind of deafening still — and grin. 

“We need to get him out of here,” he hisses.

“What, why? He’s having so much fun. He hasn’t smiled this much since I’ve known him.”

“Creepy,” Lance points out, leaning forward to look at Keith around Hunk. “It’s creepy, how soft he is right now. But he’s probably fine.”

“At some point, y’all’re going to have to trust me,” he grits out. 

Hunk and Lance both nod into their food. Keith seethes quietly until it’s polite to leave. Then, seeing his chance, he gets up and rounds the table, going the long way so as not to move behind the queens and pose a threat. “Shiro,” he says, dropping a hand on his shoulder. “Shiro, we need to go.”

His head lolls back, half-coordinated, and he tips a grin up at Keith. “Anywhere you want to go, Kogane.” He gamely stands, only losing his balance a little bit, and wraps his arms around Keith, pressing his face into the crook of his neck before straightening. 

“Your Highnesses,” Shrio gets out unslurred. Keith is proud of him. It’s probably been actual years since he drank anything, he was bound to be a lightweight. “It’s been an honor. We . . . look forward to talking with you tomorrow.”

The queens laugh and wave him off. Shiro doesn’t move his arms from around Keith’s shoulders, just lets their hips bump as they walk away. Lance and Hunk tail them after making their own goodbyes. They’d lost Pidge to the philosophers halfway through the banquet, so Keith makes a mental note to check on her later, since Shiro probably won’t be able to.

(He could, actually, and probably will if left to his own devices. But Keith likes Shiro like this, pliant and happy and doe-eyed, so he’ll probably try to tuck Shiro into bed tonight and promise to do the requisite check-up on the crew by himself.)

“How are your eyes so pretty?” Shiro asks halfway to the ship.

Keith sighs softly. This was bound to happen. He ignores the choking sound and muffled laughter from behind them. “Because I’m Galran, probably.”

“Always been gorgeous. Don’t understand. Prettier than all the planets we knew about. I just love you a lot, you know?”

“ . . .I do, Takashi.”

“Good. Don’t say it enough. Deserve t’know, no matter how you feel. Everyone should know how much I love them.”

“Hunk and Lance are right there,” Keith reminds him. 

Shiro twists his head and blinks at the pair. “I love you both. In a different way than I love Keith. But I really, really love you guys. You make excellent legs. Easygoing. Not great at orders, but that’s part of what makes Voltron work so well. You’re both incredible. I’m glad you’re best friends. You deserve happiness.”

With that, he lets his head fall onto Keith’s shoulder and falls into step with him. “Keith,” he whispers, probably because volume control was never his strong suit when he was drinking, “I think I’m more drunk than planned. They just kept refilling? I wasn’t trying to even keep up with the royal family. I just wasn’t expecting to be this gone.”

“I know, buddy.”

“You should probably leave.”

“We’re at the Castle. Nowhere else to go but in.”

“No, like. Split off.” Shiro looks up at him with those sad eyes that are just a little unfocused, and Keith fucking caves. 

“Need to make sure you get back to your room.”

“But I -”

“Yeah, you’re a dick, Shiro, let’s just get you back.”

Shiro buries his face in Keith’s neck again and breathes deeply as they walk. He doesn’t want to think about what Hunk and Lance are probably thinking. He lets out a long sigh that tickles the hair at Keith’s ears. “I won’t leave unless you want me to, Shiro.”

“You should.”

Keith smacks the back of Shiro’s head. It’s not quite gentle, but that’s probably more comforting than cruel to Shiro at the moment.

“I’m staying.”

“. . . are Hunk and Lance still with us?”

“Yep,” they both say at the same time. 

Shiro hums and bites his lip, releasing it slowly. He nods just as painstakingly and keeps quiet.

Keith, for his part, is going insane. Shiro always gets horny when he’s around Keith and mind-altering substances. Matt had been quick to assure Keith, the first time they’d snuck out to get high together and Shiro had dragged Keith along, that Shiro had never been that flirtatious around anyone else. He smiles at the memory, at the flashes of Matt’s easy grin, so much like Pidge’s, at his high-pitched laugh and Shiro’s loose body and quicksilver smile.

“Hey, you remember that time you got high with Matt?” he asks as they turn down another hallway. The walk to their rooms really is endless sometimes. He’s half-suspicious that the Castle makes it longer some days. 

“Which time?”

Hunk and Lance make matching delighted noises in their throats. He doesn’t waste too much time worrying about how much Shiro’s going to kick his ass for this later. 

(He’d honestly kind of forgotten they were there, wrapped up in the memory and Shiro’s arms.)

“The time you brought me along.”

“Oh. Right. Only did that once. Matt told me to stop, said I embarrassed myself.”

“Yeah, you probably would have been.”

“I’m so sorry if I made you uncomfortable. Did I ever apologize for that? I never meant to make you feel like you couldn’t trust me.” Shiro looks at him with wide, scared eyes. Keith is torn between laughing and cooing at him. He does neither. 

“You didn’t, but you did ghost me for a little while after. Spooked about making me uncomfortable, was close to what you said. Never asked if I minded.”

“Did you?”

“No. You’re nicer when you’re not sober. I didn’t think that was possible at the Garrison. You always seemed to nice to me.” A beat, but Shiro keeps looking enchanted by Keith’s voice, so he continues. He always was a sucker for making Shiro happy, and it’s a lot easier when he’s drunk. Shiro actually shows his emotions. “Then, one day, I catch you reaming this kid. He’s nearly in tears, and you haven’t raised your voice once. Was savage. After that I started listening.” Keith’s not sure why he’s saying all this in front of Hunk and Lance, a tipsy Shiro or no, except that maybe he’s a little drunk too. “And it turned out, they were all a little scared of you, even the officers. One of the youngest cadets ever promoted, never raised your voice because you didn’t need to. Garrison’s golden boy, and I’d gotten high with him, and he’d told me my eyes were pretty and he liked how I knew I was full of shit.”

“Mnmmm, you always knew what you’d done. You just weren’t sorry and never made it an actual inconvenience. Was funny.”

“See,” Keith says, the hallway lined with the Paladins’ rooms finally coming into view, “that’s why everyone was scared of you. You always forget to show when you thought something was funny. You just kept your stoic face on and waited for me to mess someone else up.”

“You were making everyone a wreck. Was funny. And hurt.”

Lance trips behind them. Keith assumes Hunk caught him, but doesn’t glance back to check   
“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Half my class was in love with you. Brought you to hang out with us too much, maybe. You slept with half my friends. Kent wouldn’t stop talking about it. Think he felt better, that I got promoted but still nobody was interested in me.”

Suddenly, this conversation isn’t half as fun as it was. He tries to backtrack, unable to remember the passcode for Shiro’s door. “I didn’t mean-”

“S’fine. You had fun, right? Felt good?”

“Sometimes,” Keith admits, finally punching in the numbers on the lock. “Felt nice in the moment.”

“S’what’s important, then. You deserve nice things.”

Keith chances a glance behind them as the door whirrs open. He’d expected Hunk’s look of gentle concern, with scrunched eyebrows and soft eyes. He hadn’t expected Lance to look genuinely heartbroken for them, like he was watching a deadly crash in slow motion. Keith gives them the finger and guides Shiro to his bed, relaxing a little once the door automatically shuts behind them. 

“I’ll see you in the morning, Shiro. Sleep tight until then,” he tells him, pulling off his outer clothes and stepping back.

“Leaving?”

“For both of us. You’ll be happier waking up alone.”

“Always waking up alone,” Shiro mutters into a pillow. “Always wishing I was with you.”

Keith doesn’t know what to say to that. He feels a weird sense of deja vu though. Something about Shiro’s half-articulated murmurs, maybe. He stares as Shiro snuggles into his blanket until it clicks.

That time the three of them had gotten high, Shiro had curled up between Matt and Keith and stared into the flames of their campfire. They’d gone on a not-technically-against-the-rules camping trip, mostly to get high and come back without the chance of them being caught. Shiro had been quiet most of the night, complimenting them both when he did talk, even if he said very different things about Matt and Keith. Finally, when the conversation had tapered out, he’d spoken, soft and sad. “No one should ever tell the truth.”

“Not even when it’s a good truth?” Matt had asked.

“No good truths,” Shiro mumbled back. “Only truths that hurt more in the moment, or that’ll hurt more later.”

Keith had butted his head onto Shiro’s shoulder. “Like how you feel about someone?”

“Especially how you feel about someone. No one should feel obligated to love you. Feelings are personal. Not. Not for guilt-tripping and winning something.”

“Then how come you’ve been talking Keith up all night?” Matt had said with a smile. He and Keith had gone lighter on their joints, but Shiro had been riled up all week. Keith wouldn’t connect the dots until later, but his mother had been on base to hand out awards. He doesn’t think she’d acknowledged Shiro in front of anyone once.

“Because it’s okay that he doesn’t feel anything for me. I just love him. I’m happy to love him. You know that right?” he asked earnestly, swinging his head around to address Keith.

Keith doesn’t remember what he’d answered, if he’d answered at all. He just remembered Matt’s ruefull look the next day, and the way Matt had relaxed when Shiro had admitted he didn’t remember the night before when they talked about it over breakfast.

Matt had cornered Keith about it later though, worried but not particularly angry. “You won’t tell him what he told you, right?”

“Why would I?” he’d asked, a bit baffled. Shiro didn’t like to wear his emotions on his sleeve. Keith understood that well enough, and he didn’t want to start something with Shiro that neither of them wanted to finish.

Matt had sighed. “Cool.”

Back in the present, Shiro grabs a pillow and holds it to his chest, looking at Keith with a wounded expression. “I don’t think I meant to say that out loud.”

“No, probably not.”

He nods. “Okay. You win tonight. You were right.”

For a second, he almost pretends to play dumb and ask what he’s talking about. “Right. I’m. Okay.” Keith backs out of the room, in a weird, mostly-drunk staredown with a sleepy and petulant Shiro. He almost laughs at how ridiculous this all is.

He makes sure the bedroom door is shut and sits on Shiro’s couch. Each room is closer to an apartment, with a small cooking station to one side of the living room and a bedroom with an attached bathroom. Shiro hasn’t personalized his at all. It’s Spartan, nothing of his own on the walls and barely anything Shiro could call his own in the room. It feels the kind of empty Shiro looks when he’s tired and done pretending to be okay.

There is a single, messy pile of books and notebooks on the table between the couch and sofa. If this were before Kerberos, Keith would’ve picked up the notebooks to flip through, try to find any doodles. But it’s not, and Keith isn’t sure he has that kind of blanket permission in Shiro’s life anymore.

He slips out of his shoes and tucks his feet up onto the couch. Falls asleep staring at that pile of books, all the things he doesn’t know about Shiro these days.

~~~ 

Shiro snaps awake four hours later. 

Not a muscle twitches or tenses, but his eyes fly open and he knows, with the kind of certainty that comes from a history of fighting for sleep, that he’s irreversibly awake for the day. 

Something prickles uncomfortably under his skin. He takes deep breaths and shuts his eyes, working out what’s wrong. He doesn’t let himself move until he figures it out — the lights are all off. He didn’t tell the AI to just dim his room before bed. Probably because he was less than sober; Keith being there probably had something to do with it, even if he doesn’t remember much. 

He pictures telling Keith that he can barely sleep in the dark anymore until he wants to cry. It doesn’t take very long. Then he gets up to brush his teeth.

“Turn lights to 25%,” he whispers before slinking into the bathroom. 

When he’s done, the light hasn’t helped the simmering panic in his chest or the way he feels like he just drank an entire pot of coffee. He just feels more able to deal with the world.

With slumped shoulders, Shiro starts to go over every part of his room. It’s a bit messy, and it’s been a while since he’s felt this out of sorts, so he goes slow and touches everything. It’s less checking for tampering and more about assurance, grounding himself in this place and time. When he finishes with his bedroom he finally opens the door and starts on his living room, again calling out a soft order for light.

The dusty blue glow flushes out the details of the room: the low table with six books stacked in alphabetical order, two notebooks pushed between a couple of them filled with notes on Altea’s religious rituals and new fighting styles. The ridiculously tall but plush chair in the corner. The couch with sightlines to all the doors in the room, pulled far enough away from the wall that he could flip it over and use it as cover if need be. None of that is what catches his eye.

There’s a person curled up on his side on the couch, legs draw up almost to his chest, hair a frizzy mess, wrist no doubt falling asleep from where it’s tucked under his cheek. His heart tightens to the point of pain at seeing Keith sleeping so soundly in his space, unbothered by Shiro’s quiet breathing and silent footsteps. It’s been years since Shiro could sleep that soundly. 

He kneels next to Keith, thinking quickly. He’ll wake him up, tell him to curl up in bed, or give him his own bed to rest in. Shiro needs to work with Black on his Altean and the gears in her rear left paw, anyway. 

He cradles Keith’s cheek in his human palm. “Keith,” he calls. Then, when he still doesn’t move, he adds “Kogane,” just as softly.

Keith’s eyelids shift, flutter, and he nuzzles into Shiro’s hand before his eyes drift open. “Sh’ro?”

“Yeah, buddy. You’re going to fuck up your back sleeping like that.”

“Didn’t you sleep on space metal for a year or something?” Keith snaps back without heat. He always was sharp in the morning.

It makes Shiro smile. “And now my back is fucked. Respect your elders.”

That makes Keith wake the rest of the way up. “Kneeling probably isn’t great on your knees, either. Get up here.” He sits upright, making room for a grateful Shiro next to him. “So, what’s up?”

“You were sleeping on the couch. You can take my bed if you need.”

“Only if you’re in it.”

They both stare at each other for a second. Keith fights to keep his face straight, against the urge to laugh nervously and take it back. Neither of them have ever been the most forward. But maybe that’s why it’s always been so hard for them to get on the same page about this, when everything else between them has always been easy. 

“Keith—”

“No, I stand by it. I’m finally here, finally in a place where I feel like I could take on this relationship and not inevitably fuck it up, and you’re telling me I’m wrong.” He doesn’t look away from Shiro, even after Shiro breaks eye contact to look around the room and take a deep breath. 

“I’m worried you don’t want me anymore. That I’m too old for you in all the ways that matter now. Which is stupid, because we’re here together. But I killed people, I get nightmares and I can’t move, I don’t even know who I am half the time. And you’re you, and steady, but what if I’m leaning on you too hard?”

“You listen to me,” Keith cuts in, steely. “I’ll tell you when I’m not comfortable. We talk.”

“That’s.” Shiro clears his throat. “I don’t know if that’s ever been our strong suit.”

“It is when you’re high. Or drunk.”

He turns scarlet. It makes the scar on his nose stand out, strangely adorable even if it is an unsettling reminder of pain and separation. “Right. I’m—”

“I’ll kick your ass if you apologize again. It was cute, even if you did say everything in front of Lance and Hunk.”

“Oh God.”

“Yeah. I’ll fill you in later. But really, Shiro. Let’s try it out. You sound like you still want to.”

“I do! I really do, Keith. I just feel like my head’s a mess and I don’t know how to make that not suck for all of us. Both of us.”

Keith smiles, grabs Shiro’s hand and laces their fingers together. “I used to think I was too fucked up to be with you. I was angry and trying things out, and I thought that I was too angry to make you happy and, later, like I’d thrown sex in your face, almost.”

“I never cared, Keith, you know that.”

“I do. I know it hurt you for a little bit, but I also know you were just happy that I was happy.”

Shiro ducks his head. “It helped that you weren’t serious about them. You can always do what you want, but it was . . . nice that I was still the one you talked to the most.”

Keith grins softly. “I know. And I think that’s what makes us work. We take each other as we are. I had a lot of time to think, while we thought you were dead. And I realized that we didn’t have to be perfect to make this work.  _ You _ don’t have to be perfect to make this work.”

“I’d like—”

_ Raprapraprap. _

“Paladins, time to play nice with the locals.”

Their gaze melts from serious to amused. “Coran,” they sigh together, and stand. “Be out in twenty,” Shiro calls. 

Keith smirks. “Need your beauty time?”

“You laugh, but I’ve got a routine, and I’m taking my shower first,” Shiro laughs. “Unless you’re going to walk of shame back to your room when you know Coran and probably everyone else are out and about right now.”

“. . . I’ll start in on making space coffee.”

“You could probably just call it  _ unglaw, _ ” Shiro calls, not sliding the bathroom door completely shut. 

_ Shower _ probably isn’t the right term for what they do on the Castle. There’s foam involved, and some kind of sonic wave that dries it into a powder that puffs off of them easily. It takes less than three minutes all told. 

The foam puffs out as Keith pokes at the machine. “Aren’t you the one who’s all existentialist about space?’

“Nothing matters, there —” he pauses as the sonic whirs, probably to keep dust from getting in his mouth, “there are no rules out here.”

“Then come get your space coffee and I’ll take the shower while you fix your face.”

If they’re being honest, most of the time they take getting ready is sipping their space coffee and lounging in the bathroom, Keith watching Shiro put on his eyeliner and both of them getting distracted with snarking at one another. They’re a couple minutes later than Shiro had promised, striding out to the main Castle doors, Keith a half step behind and to the side of Shiro.

“You didn’t have to wake up Keith,” Coran tells him when he sees them, putting down the hologram display projector he’d been scrolling through. “No need for backup today, we’re just negotiating the treaty and building a relationship. Although I do suppose more paladins can never hurt. Make Their Radiances feel more appreciated. Allura’s already there.”

Shiro tilts his head to look at Keith out of the corner of his eye, both of their faces carefully blank. It makes sense that Coran hadn’t just called to them over the loud speakers now, Keith figures. Still, better to not admit to anything.

He nods. “I thought the same.”

Coran waves and leads them out. “It makes sense. Keith does always seem to be at your shoulder. Bit like a bodyguard, eh?”

Shiro whips his head around, smirking, eyes shining because  _ yes, exactly that _ , he’d never noticed before, but Keith always stands like this, in prme bodyguard stance. He’s never going to stop teasing him about it once they’re in private. Keith resigns himself to a long day of Shiro silently laughing at him even as Shiro’s face drops back to neutral and he faces forward again. “Allura is negotiating the finer points of the treaty?”

“Left just after she told me to get you. Easiest to get the finer points out of the way. This is  what she was trained to do, after all.”

Shiro doesn’t comment after that, probably processing Allura’s early life. They spent more time together than Keith often spent with Allura, last-ditch effort to find out if the Galra were tracking either of them aside. He wonders if Allura will be happy to see him there when she didn’t ask for him. 

Things are still raw between them. Not uncomfortable, but there’s no erasing the past. He studies Shiro as they enter the sprawling castle made entirely of plants. Ahead of him, Shiro is steady, calm, but there’s an awareness to him that is nearly impossible to miss — Shiro probably knows every twitch that happens within a dozen yards of him, probably tracks every face, turn, and door they pass. Around them, thick stalks with large flowers make up the corridors. There are no ceilings, only concentric levels to the castle, each one taller than the last, so it looks like the castle is a hill. He’s not sure if the taller levels have rooms under them or not. He’s not in a hurry to find out. 

Coran chatters with their guide once they hit a second pair of gates, where guards are posted and one of them detaches herself to lead them in what Keith swears are circles. Finally, they break into what looks like a bowl filled with dazzling sunlight. The flowers here are all nearly sparkling, neon in colors that even Coran gasps over and starts to babble about. Their universal translators don’t work on some of the colors he uses. When he looks to Shiro for askance, he shrugs. “I’m pretty sure Alteans see more colors than us. Sometimes, Allura makes fun of me for wearing colors that don’t match,” he adds when Keith looks confused.

“Welcome, Paladins,” a voice booms out. It seems to echo, making them repress a shiver. They’re both taller than Coran or Shiro, one built slim with a nearly blue aura over her brown skin, and the other sturdy with a yellow glint to her dark olive skin.

Allura looks up from the table she and the two queens are bent over and smiles. “May I present to you once more Paladin Shirogane, Paladin Keith, and my advisor, Sir Coran.” 

Shiro bows. “Delighted to see you again, Your Radiances.”

The one that seems to shimmer more blue than yellow raises her eyebrows. Both are wrapped in transparent green cloth, the effect of which does more to add a blur to their figures than suggest any real shape. He catches Shiro’s appreciative eye — he’s going to have to listen to Shiro whine about how much he’d love to wear something like that the next time he gets drunk or high, Keith knows.

“As we you,” the more yellow one says.

“We received notice at second sun-up that a pirate had been obliterated,” the other one smoothly interjects. They often seem to flow together, one picking up where the other leaves off, a seamless switch from one voice to the other. “We believe this to be you?”

“It was,” Shiro tells them. “We felt it was the best course of action, so as not to alert the galaxy to our whereabouts, and have enemies attacking planets in the hope of catching us.”

They nod as one. “We don’t disagree.” Keith isn’t even entirely sure with one of them says it. 

Allura waves the three of them over to the table. “We were just talking about what we might need from one another.”

“We need nothing written,” the yellow one says, her voice a deep, rolling proclamation. Allura hides her frustration well, but she still takes a slightly deeper breath than usual to settle herself. 

“We have enough war within our planet,” the blue one intones.

“Oh?” Shiro asks, wanting more information but unsure how to phrase it.

The yellow one smiles patiently. “Our society is . . . different than what you might be used to. Other worlds often see fighting as destruction. In some ways, our fighting is the same. But our world balances too much sunlight with too much life. We do not eat each other, as so many in the universe do. Instead, we take sustenance from the sun and our world.”

“They’re all basically plants,” Coran tells them.

The blue one inclines her head, thinking it over before accepting it. “That is not an unlikely comparison.”

“So when we have war, it is to redefine where we live in relation to the sun, but it also benefits our world. We grow in different places, cultivate our ground in different ways that rotates the nutrients we must take and give to it. War is movement more than true battle to us.” The yellow one shrugs, and slowly turns back to Allura. “Princess.”

“Yes?” she asks, only for the blue one to start speaking instead of the yellow one that had addressed her.

“We appreciate your offer, and we are here to hear all of your requests. But we are self-sufficient, and wary of newcomers.”

“Newcomers take  _ meat _ ,” the yellow one adds in distaste. “They try to change us often. We have come to accept that we will not use the same technology as most of the galaxy, but be happier in our relative isolation.”

“So as for treaties,” Allura asks, “could we agree to that? That we can hear one another’s requests, and decide on our options so long as we are friendly and make time for one another when we need?”

The two look at each other for a long moment before nodding ever so slightly. “It is agreed,” the blue one says. “We will provide you sustenance for another night, then you may leave us.”

“If you only need sunlight, what did we eat and drink last night?” Shiro asks once it’s clear that there are no other proclamations forthcoming. 

The yellow one grins. “We eat and drink, but they are also plants, though not of the kind that we are. Perhaps a little like you. But they are not sentient. They are much like the walls of this palace. Home and sustenance at once. We do consume, but selectively, giving thanks for what we take and taking only what we need.”

“Oh. Thank you for sharing with us,” he says, sounding genuinely grateful. Keith kind of wants to hug him and tell him he deserves nice things.

The queens turn back to the document that Allura is typing on a projected hologram. Once done, she gives it to them to agree to, then makes a physical copy on a what looks like a giant rose petal. 

They bow their way out and leave them to their governing obligations. On the way out, Keith leans into Shiro’s shoulder and whispers, “hey, what do you call this place?”

“Uh, I’m not even sure they have cities, but the planet’s called  _ Tintra _ by other planets. Mostly clicks here though. You know this.”

“Yeah, but I thought you’d call this planet a  _ plantet _ .”

Shiro lets out a loud snort that startles Coran and their guide. Allura just gives them a questioning smile that Shiro grins and shakes his head at her, shrugging. 

“That was tragic.”

“Made you laugh.”

They duck through another long hall, short for their guide but tall enough for all of them. Shiro’s shoulders slowly start to tense. Keith looks around, wondering what he’d missed. Nothing’s obviously wrong, but Shiro’d just been laughing at this stupid joke. Ahead, there’s nothing but more plants, and plant people. 

“Shiro?”

He shakes his head, but moves to hover closer to Coran and Allura, bunching them all together. 

Keith writes it off as paranoia, which is normal enough for Shiro these days, but pays attention to the flex of his arms and trying to track what Shiro’s paying the most attention to. What’s real enough for Shiro is real enough for Keith, in his head or not. And these days, Keith would rather be too alert than dead. 

Ten minutes is enough time to turn Shiro into a giant ball of tense focus, enough that Allura has taken to side-eying him and the plant people they pass edge away. Shiro nearly flinches when the final gate comes into view with nothing but wide open space beyond it.

“Buddy?” Keith checks in.

“Princess,” Shiro says, nodding at Keith in acknowledgement, “I think it would be best to proceed with caution.”

She raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him, but nods. None of them are particularly prone to making ridiculous requests. Even Coran nods; he might be dramatic, but he’s no stranger to war. They rearrange themselves slightly, a looser grouping with Allura and Shiro at the front, by far the best hand-to-hand fighters on the team. Keith pulls out his bayard and steps out to Shiro’s right a few steps behind, Coran doing the same to Allura on his other side. Shiro doesn’t really settle, but he does look firmer. 

Their guide bows them out, and they start their trek back to the Castle, far enough away that their engines blasting off won’t harm the city. 

“Thanks for indulging me, guys,” Shiro says, and Keith just knows he’s grinning sheepishly. “This is probably—”

Keith has a moment to think  _ famous last words _ before it feels like the world is exploding around him. 

~~~

Shiro’s arm, a long edge of purple that hums with surprise and barely restrained fury. Allura, activating her holo-shield and barking orders. A cloud that’s poison darts and pink, sickly looking yellow-green bursts where the sky should be. Allura yells for him to head for the ship, raise comms and get the others. He tries. 

~~~

Shiro notices the cloud that swarms over the horizon almost instantly, but it’s  _ fast _ . 

He stutters, stops what he’d been saying, and braces his arm, focusing on the taste of iron and a shivery cold. He’s not sure if that’s the only way to activate his Galran arm, but it’s the only real way he knows how to do it purposefully. Allura’s eyes track his, but by the time a few seconds have passed and the thing’s almost on top of them.

She pulls out a shield. Yells to Coran to run back and warn the city, for Keith to get to the Castle. They’re fastest. Shiro knows that they’ll try to make it to the ship as well, but they’re slower than the other two. If they can distract it on the way, it’s everyone’s best shot.

He takes a deep breath and bends his knees, blanking his brain. 

The cloud is on top of them, and he’s ducked under the shield—thankfully translucent—as darts, almost like rose thorns, rain down on them. They aren’t deadly sharp so much as they’re a little jagged and a lot slimy.

Shiro had brought along his helmet, but can’t remember if Keith had. 

“Where’s the center?” he shouts.

She shakes her head. “I think it’s maybe right there, where it changes from lavender to quiensen.”

“It’s funny,” Shiro says through gritted teeth, “because I was  _ just _ telling Keith about how you see more colors than us.”

Allura barks out a short laugh. “If you wanted to slash your way over, maybe ten paces ahead and then up, you might hit something important. If this isn’t just a hive.”

“Push forward before me, I’ll jump off your shield.”

She nods decisively and muscles her way ahead. The barbs increase, seem to focus on her the more she pushes forward, and a wind drives down and backwards against her. She braces when she’s hit her mark and half-turns to keep Shiro in her line of sight. 

The cloud, if possible, seems confused by her stillness now. A rattling sound echoes, above them the colors swirl, but Allura seems sure of where she’s at. 

Shiro sprints towards her, shoulders hunched in and arm raised to ward off the darts from his faceplate. He jumps and Allura crouches more, pushing off as Allura shoves upwards with her whole body.

As Shiro twists in a circle with his arm out, slashing as the pitched buzzing increases, he thinks about how bullshit space is sometimes. He’s being attacked by sentient plants that he can’t even communicate with. 

_ Sheer and utter bullshit, _ he thinks as he lands back on the ground, rolling to soften the landing.

“Hit anything?” he yells. 

Allura grunts. “Maybe, it’s fading in color a bit, and hasn’t moved much.” 

The barbs have caught on her face a couple times, leaving long scratches, a tear in her eyebrow, one lodged in her ear like some kind of horrific earring. 

Shiro pants and backs up so they’re both under the shield, back to back. “Again, you think?”

“Only way to hit what’s causing this. Did you see anything up there?”

“Just mist, it looked like. Maybe some fuzzy shapes.”

“Again, then.”

“If my mother could see me now,” Shiro mutters, and darts out from under the cover. Allura recenters herself under what she thinks is the heart of the cloud. It’s closer to the castle again, but not as much as it could have been. He takes another run, slashes through the air again. Feels the breath slammed out of his lungs as something catches him around the ribs and squeezes. 

He exhales a grunt and twists. It doesn’t let go. 

Shiro rips what feels like a thick spider leg clean through the joint with his Galra hand, holding the part he hadn’t severed with his human hand. 

The thing above him makes a shrieking sound and twirls through the air frantically. He hangs on, trying to see anything through the fog. 

Finally, the thing’s thrashing clears some of it, and he can see what look like . . . well. Like giant centipedes if centipedes were a little bigger than Pidge and had spider’s legs with darts spewing from the ends, antennae, and hard-shelled bodies that spat mist out from under their delicate wings. They’re in a spread pattern, with a particularly fat one in the center. The more distant ones at the edge of his vision are smaller and lighter in color. 

His grip is getting slicker, the thing’s blood soaking through the air. It’s hot, and puffs up bits of steam against his armor. He hangs on until it starts to drop, then swings his lower body once, letting go on his second swing to launch himself at another insect-thing closest to them. It’s, terrifyingly, just a little but fun.

Shiro catches a wing with his human hand, takes a split second to get his bearings, and stabs it through the heart before bracing his feet on it’s body and jumping off to the next one. 

The insects take notice. Three sink towards him, and the air is thick with darts. 

A roar sounds on the horizon. 

Relief courses through him, and he sinks his hand through the head of the insect he’s on, riding it’s slowed fall as it’s beating wings frantically flap to keep it upright. He jumps off as a second insect dives towards Shiro and the one he’s on starts to do a barrel roll. 

He slashes against the one coming at him, grabbing it just under the jaw and slowing his fall again. 

How high had Allura thrown him? He’s vaguely impressed, in the part of his brain that no longer engages in fights. 

It squeals, and he grabs at the joint and lets himself become deadweight. 

There’s a moment of sick tension, then the jaw rips off and Shiro plummets the last few feet, dropping the jaw and throwing himself out of the way of the screaming bug. Allura, yards away, spins towards him. She doesn’t spare a second to acknowledge him, but lifts her head again and sidesteps a diving bug. 

“I think they’re getting more aggressive,” she yells.

“You think?” he asks, jogging towards her. 

Whatever reply she was going to make is lost under Blue’s roar. It knocks the fog back, the bugs roiling and rolling over one another to maintain flight. Blue swipes at them with a paw, batting them back and forth like a real cat. Shiro is half-convinced Blue and Lance are having real fun with this. 

_ At least someone is, _ he thinks as he glances over at Allura, whose arms are steady but for the fine tremors made obvious by the shield. They’re both still trying to avoid the worst of the darts dripping down from the crowded sky. 

In the distance, Green swoops over the city-palace, flying the perimeter. 

Shiro makes a mental note to praise her for not leaving the city undefended. A smaller swarm approaches from the opposite side of the city, and he takes a moment to watch as she decimates them with ease. 

Matt would’ve been cheering, at this point, he knows. 

Allura relaxes next to him, and he looks back up as the noise of the fight recede. 

The bugs are tumbling back in retreat. Blue continues to bat the closer ones to the ground, but generally leaves them be. Always best to tread carefully and respect retreats on foreign planets. 

It’s another moment before Blue drops down in front of them and opens its mouth to take them aboard. 

“Hello Princess, Shiro. Don’t mind me, I’m just your knight in shining blue armor, here to save the day.”

“Noted,” Shiro calls into the empty hallway, knowing Blue will transmit his voice to Lance unless she’s got a reason not to. “Where’re Hunk and Keith?”

“Hunk’s guarding the Castle. Keith called us on comms. Is he not with you?”

“No,” Allura calls. “But he might be back at the Castle by now.”

Shiro fiddles with his helmet, pressing the buttons to key back into their comm system. He hadn’t had the time before, and it had been off since the last time he’d trained with it on. The limited field vision bothered him, and he’d started to compensate in stupid ways. He and Keith had been working on sparring in them, and it was easier with the comms off. 

“Keith?” he calls once the receiver's clicked on.

“Hey buddy,” Hunk booms, followed by Pidge’s excited, “Shiro! Did you see that?”

“I did, and hi,” he says, affectionate. “But have any of you seen Keith?”

A series of no’s are relayed. “Blue, let me off.”

“What? We’re almost to the Castle!” Lance’s voice comes out doubled from the broadcast system within the Lion and in his headset. Allura looks at him sadly. 

“That’s not a good idea, Shiro. You’re hurt.”

There’s actually nothing obviously wrong with him, but he can definitely tell that a couple ribs are at least bruised. What he won’t admit to won’t kill him yet, though, so he rushes it off. “I’m fine. But Keith’s somewhere between where we were and the Castle. I need to find him, and you’re definitely hurt.”

She slits her eyes, like he might be lying. It’s not impressive, as her eyes were already slipped mostly shut to avoid the thick trails of blood flowing down her face and showing no signs of clotting. He motions to one of the scratches. “If anyone can get a signal on him,” Shiro says,” we can do a pickup in the Lion. Otherwise, just get me close enough and I’ll look. Pidge, can you get in touch with Coran and sort out what happened with the palace?”

“On it,” she chirps.

“Looking now,” Hunk tells him. “Uh, not exactly, but he should be within five hundred feet of the Castle’s main gate? Tracker’s on the fritz.”

“Drop me off there, then, close as you can get if you can see him,” Shiro tells Lance.

“I can’t. He’s nowhere in sight,” Lance’s voice echoes again. “But I can drop you off around where he should be. There’s some hills and shrubbery in the way. Could just be somewhere Blue can’t quite see.”

“That’s fine.”

Allura shakes out her arms. “I’ll need a cloth for my face, antiseptic, and then I can go meet with the rulers again to sort this out. After that, we should be free to leave.”

“The sooner the better,” Lance calls. “You can come up to the cockpit, there’s a first aid kit under the paneling to the right.”

“Coming up. Shiro, good luck.” She slaps him on the bicep, and Shiro tries not to wince in pain. He’s not sure he succeeds, but he thinks she probably can’t tell even if he fails to hide it from all the blood and sweat on her face.

Allura disappears into the faintly-lit abyss of the Lion, her white hair throwing back some of the light. Just as she rounds the corner, Blue’s mouth opens again. “Here’s your stop, bro.”

Blue leans forward to make the drop as short as possible, and Shiro jumps the last couple feet. He glances around, trying to figure out the straightest line between where Keith had split from them and the gate. He takes off towards a cluster of trees just off where that path would take him, where a couple centipedes are on the ground still twitching. 

“Keith? Keith!” he calls, worried that the bugs aren’t actually dead yet. It’s not like Keith to half-finish a job.

His side is on fire, but he pushes away the feeling. “Keith?”

A twig snaps, on his left, further away from the bugs. “Keith?”

A rustle. He follows the sound to a large tree. Behind it, Keith is curled up, broken helmet tucked into his midsection, one hand curled around his neck. His breathing is shallow, but his eyes flicker open when Shiro approaches. His lips flicker into a pale blue smile. 

There’s blood seeping out from between his fingers.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Shiro says, trying to calm his voice. He kneels down and moves Keith’s hand to see the damage. “Okay, alright. Looks like you’ve been better.”

“Aren’t you glad . . .” Keith whispers. It’s ragged, thready, but there. Shiro rips at his undershirt, ignoring the painful twist of his wrist as he shoves it under his own armor to grab enough cloth to gently press around the dart that had stuck in Keith’s throat. It looked like it had just missed his carotid. 

“Glad?” he asks distractedly.    
  
“Glad you . . .” a painful wheeze, “you already told me y’love me?”

“God, yes.” Shiro says, earnestly pained and painfully earnest. “Now put your hand on this and try not to push in the sticker. I don’t know if it’s worse to keep it in you or pull it out.”

“Guess’s good as mine,” he mutters.

Shiro starts to gather him in his arms. “Yeah buddy, probably.” He picks him up, cradles him to his chest and rests his head against his shoulder. “Maybe a little bit worse. You always were too smart for me.”

“D’nt, make me . . . laugh.” 

“Trying not to. Just hold in there, we’re almost to the Castle. You did well. You did so well.”

"Bugs crack m'helmet. Took it off to comm in. Stuck then." Keith drifts off, last couple words slurring to nearly unintelligible. 

He’s on the verge of panicking and trying not to show it. Shiro walks as fast as he can while trying to minimize how much he jostles Keith in his arms. “C’mon,” he says, as they get to the main doors. They drop open too slowly for Shiro’s liking, just as Keith starts to go limp.

“C’mon, Kogane, you can’t go like this.” He strides in, making his way directly to the medbay, the fastest way he knows how. The elevator feels painfully slow, but at least it’s not jerking Keith around. “I was just thinking, you know, it’d be so stupid to die after you saw those things. 

Lance jogs up from an adjoining corridor. “I thought I heard you guys, Allura’s-” he freezes, eyes widening at the sight of Keith, pale and bloody and limp. 

Shiro clenches his jaw, nods acknowledgement at Lance, and keeps hustling to the med pods. “Those things shouldn’t exist. We can’t die from something so ugly. You were made to die in a supernova, in a dying star. C’mon Keith, nice and easy,” he says, gently settling Keith into the pod and taking away the cloth. “This’ll hurt, but easy here.” He jerks out the dart and slams his hand on the button to seal the pod.

The wound starts bleeding even more heavily as the door slides shut, then freezes as the pane smokes over. Shiro puts a hand to the now-opaque viewscreen and then taps his head against it. “It would’ve been easier for both of us to die before all of this. But we didn’t. So you have to make it.”

He sucks in a startled breath when a hand lands softly on his shoulder, his Galran arms fizzing to life, spitting sparks. 

Lance raises his hands and stumbles back a step.

Shiro immediately feels like an ass. 

“No, Lance, it’s okay. I’m sorry.” He half reaches out with his human hand, his Galran arm turning a muted purple before fading back to gray slowly.

Lance watches it with cautious eyes. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Of course,” Shiro tells him. He takes a step toward Lance, who looks about ready to cry. “Can I hug you?”

Lance throws himself into Shiro’s arms. “I don’t want him to die either,” he whispers into his chest. 

Shiro rubs his back. “I know. Keep an eye on him?”

“Yeah, absolutely. Allura’s probably done with her med pod over there. I convinced her to jump in it when I saw how bruised she was under her armor, and her face was a mess.”

“I know. I’ll go check on her and escort her back to the palace. Keep your comms on.”

Lance nods, shaky, then straightens. “Pidge and Coran have talked to the queens. They said that they have defenses for this sort of thing, usually, but they didn’t know that the southern lands were in unrest.”

Shiro nods. “We’ll see what we can do. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay? I can go with Allura.”

“I know you can. But you’ll be able to help Keith if he needs it, and you can run point on Castle defences with Hunk better than I can.” Lance’s eyes flicker, dart away. “Hey, you two are unstoppable. We’ll be done here soon. Keith probably won’t change in status for a while. He was pretty banged up.” Shiro clears his throat and nods. Blinks hard. 

Lance reaches up and swipes his thumb over Shiro’s eyelid. He only tenses at the contact this time, which is about what Lance has come to expect, anyway. “Eyeliner smudged,” he says by way of explanation.

They grin, some of the tension bleeding off. As much as possible, Shiro supposes, when they’re still on an adrenaline high that’s going to leave them wiped soon. 

Mostly, he’s hoping that leaving Lance here means that he won’t have to drag another unconscious body back to the ship when he inevitably crashes. He’d meant it about Hunk and Lance working together, but he’s not limited to having just one reason when he makes a decision.

Lance salutes. “See you soon then, Officer Shirogane.”

Shiro smiles wryly. “Stay safe.” He goes to find Allura.

The conversation with the queens takes two hours, and the walk there an extra hour. Every time Shiro feels like falling over in exhaustion he takes a deep breath, feeling the tug and stab of pain in his sides. It does the job. 

Lance doesn’t break over their comms with updates. Shiro figures no news is better than bad news. 

By the time they make it back to the Castle of Lions, Shiro’s sweating and clammy under his armor. Pidge dances ahead of them, her, Shiro, Allura, and Coran having rode back on Green. 

“You did a good job,” Shiro tells her, settling a heavy hand on her shoulder when she flits close enough. “Good call staying by the palace.”

“This isn’t exactly our first rodeo, Shiro.”

Coran mouths the word  _ rodeo _ , looking puzzled. 

“I know, but that doesn’t always make things easier. Especially when you have to choose between lives you know and lives you don’t.”

His words settle heavily between all of them. Their footsteps are the only sounds echoing through the halls. 

“Right,” he says, when they get to one of the bigger chambers. “Pidge, please tell Hunk to get some rest. Allura, Coran?”

Allura stretches. “I’m going to get us into orbit and then rest. We all need a short break.”

“Then I’ll be with you until then. Get us a nice cup of unglaw going, keep us awake until we’re settled in space.” Coran twirls his mustache and raises his eyebrows meaningfully at Shiro. “And you young man?”

“Med pod,” he says tersely. “I’ll split off here then. Good job everyone."

  
“You too, Shiro,” Allura calls at him. He ducks his head to her and makes his way to the medbay, sighing in relief when he’s alone enough to use the walls for support.  

When he gets there, Lance is slumped on the floor, a thin trail of drool leaking from his mouth. His head is propped on the edge of Keith’s med pod. Shiro tiredly wakes up the display screen, studying the readout. Keith is in stasis, right now, nanobots working on the more vital injuries. The status flashes a yellow  **critical** . At least it’s not still on the frantic red color that’s pretty close to death, Shiro assumes. 

He tiredly knees Lance in the shoulder. “Lance.”

“Shiro?” Lance grumbles, half awake, before his eyes snap open. “¿Por qué me despiertas? ¿Cómo está Keith?” 

Shiro grins down at him. “You need to go sleep in a real bed, Lance. I’m going to jump in a med pod, but I’ll be here with him. I’ll set an alert for his pod on mine.”

“Mmmm. English. Yes. Okay. You sure?”

“Positive. Go get some sleep. We can work on my Spanish comprehension later.”

Lance blushes lightly. “Oh, sorry.”

Shiro waves him off. “Sometimes, I get high and speak only in Japanese. Keith’s accent gets worse when he’s sleep deprived. Keep him up for 40 hours and he turns into a cowboy.”

That shocks a laugh out of him. “I’m never letting that go.”

He shrugs. “We probably deserve it. Now go get some sleep. Or, better yet, you set that alarm, and I’ll get in the pod.”

“That’s kind of pushy—oh. Shiro, you look like shit.”

Shiro grins tiredly. “Been through worse.”

“Yeah, I bet. “ Lance nudges him to the closest pod. “I can put you under after I set up the alarm, then.”

Shiro goes nearly limp in relief, eyes seeming to slide shut without prompting, highlighting the lines of pain bracketing his forehead and mouth. “Thanks,” he mumbles. 

Lance smiles softly as he finishes pressing in the codes and shuts Shiro’s med pod.

~~~

Lance wakes up groggy, half-convinced the last however long had all been a dream. Shiro hadn’t really said all those things to Keith, right?

He blinks up at this ceiling, unused to seeing it first thing in the morning. He usually sat p before taking his sleeping mask off.

A soft tapping keeps going at his door. He wriggles his nose and gets up. Probably not a dream, if he’s still hearing the workout gear he layers under his armor. “Who’s there,” he calls, stumbling to the door.

When it opens in front of him, Pidge is standing there, looking tired but fine. “I think Coran and Hunk are still asleep,” she starts without preamble, “but Allura and I were up talking, and then we realized that we hadn’t seen Keith or Shiro yet. They’re both still in their pods.”

“What?” he squawks. “But Shiro didn’t look that bad?”

She shrugs. “So Allura and I were going to head down to med bay. Hunk didn’t answer his door. We figured he needed to sleep.” Allura appears over Pidge’s shoulder.

“Coran didn’t answer either. You’re welcome to come with us.”

Lance nods. “I’ll brush my teeth and be right down.”

They nod and head down the hall, Allura ducking her head to be able to speak quietly to Pidge.

It’s not even ten minutes later, but that’s apparently enough time for Pidge and Allura to settle in side by side. “And then,” Allura laughs, a mouse perched on her shoulder while the other two flit back and forth between her and Pidge, “I said, ‘you’ve got your gwamp’aan on backwards.’”

The two of them break into laughter that’s dragged out of their stomachs. 

Lance takes a second to swallow the mild swell of jealousy he feels, watching everyone get closer to each other but him, it feels like sometimes, before he shakes himself out of it. “What’s the news girls?”

Allura climbs to her feet and taps at the display screens. Pidge draws her knees up to her chest and stays where she is. “Shiro had two fractured ribs and three bruised ones, his elbow was pulled out of socked, and he had some heavy bruising. Nothing life-threatening, but.” She pauses, trying to find a polite way to phrase what they’re all thinking. 

“He’s been running himself ragged,” Pidge, ever blunt, cuts in. 

Allura shrugs. “Keith had more extensive injuries, but blood loss and poison were his biggest problems. It seems the poison is harder on humans than Alteans.”

“How long was I out?”

Allura thinks over it. “A full sleep cycle for humans, I think. Shiro should be waking up soon, I think. Keith is harder to predict.”

“Because he’s part Galran?” Lance asks, and regrets it immediately. 

“. . . I hadn’t thought of that,” Allura says slowly, “but that could be a part of it. Mostly because it looks like he’d just died when he was put in here,” she finishes. 

Lance screeches, and Pidge makes a sharp sound in reply. “He flatlined,” she explains from her spot on the floor. “Not necessarily dead, but you never know.”

“Right,” Lance mutters “Who else is extremely glad Shiro’s been out for as long as he has?”

The girls stare at him. 

“What? He’s, like, ridiculously in love with Keith. And Keith is stupid gone on him.”

“Uh?” Pidge hazards. 

Allura looks thoughtful. “That . . . explains a few things.”

“Oh, shit, did I just out them?”

A knock sounds from the door frame. Hunk is leaning against it, looking unfairly amused. “Nah, Shiro’s pretty open about being, well, he calls it queer.”

The three of them nod, and Pidge pats the ground beside her. Hunk sits down amiably and throws an arm over her shoulder. 

They stay like that for a while, Lance drawing closer to Hunk and Pidge, sliding down to slouch next to them, Allura frowning at the health displays. A frozen tableau of boneless tension. 

It feels like hours have passed by the time Shiro’s pod beeps. 

It slides open with a whir, smoke sucks quickly into the vents at the sides. He stays still, and for a moment, they worry that something went wrong. They glance nervously at one another.

Then, Pidge purses her lips like she’s frustrated that she just realized she’d made a silly mistake in a line of code somewhere. “It’s us, Shiro. You’re on the Castle of Lions, in starcluster 662.83.”

He takes a deep breath, eyes sliding open slowly. When he sits up, it’s with controlled grace. 

Shiro looks like he’s coiled tighter than a Goramander knot. His eyes sweep the room. When it comes up empty of threats, he smiles lightly at them. “You would not believe how much I hate bugs.”

Hunk snorts. Allura looks shocked, before she doubles over in laughter. Pidge and Lance lean against each other and chuckle. It breaks the tension enough that no one lunges towards Shiro when he gets up and makes his way to Keith’s pod, resting a hand on the pane and using the other to tap around on the screen. Allura backs up to give him more room.

He must still be mostly out of it, though, because he eventually stops moving, just staring with glassy eyes at the scrolling readout. No one makes a move. 

Finally, Shiro leans more of his weight on the pod and gives a small grin. “Keith, buddy, I just realized—I never asked you how old I am now. How old you are now. You’re not gonna leave me in suspense, are you?”

None of them know what to say to that. Eventually, Allura straightens her shoulders. “We’re going to need some food, and a write-up of all that’s happened for the log. Lions are going to need diagnostics soon, as well.”

“I’ll take food,” Hunk volunteers. “Yellow didn’t see any fighting. I’ll check in later today.”

Pidge and Lance nod. “We can look at the Lions,” Pidge pipes up, “if you want to write up the report?”

Allura grimaces. “No one will read these anyway. They’re not that important.”

Shiro snorts and straightens up. “I’ll write it. You can help Hunk with dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to not burn something in the kitchen, anyway.”

That’s a lie. None of them have actually seen him cook. “Will Keith back you up on that?” Lance snarks. It’s easier to feel confident about his recovery than admit that they’re all worried.

Shiro smirks. “Would he really miss the chance to make fun of me?”

Hunk and Pidge look at each other, then Shiro, and say in perfect unison, “ _ yes. _ ”

“Oh. Well. We’ll find out soon I guess.”

They nod and break off to get their work done, Shiro accepting the spare tablet Allura hands him to type up the report. He settles on the ground next to Keith’s pod and starts typing. 

~~~

They’ve made two rotations around the planet.

Shiro’s sleep cycle hasn’t been consistent since however long into his time with the Galra. He can’t even guess how long it’s been in Earth time. He’s not sure how to equate Earth time to Altean time, and Pidge gets this pinched look every time he asks that makes him feel a little bit dumb. Keith is usually pretty ambivalent about time, so it’s not like Shiro usually feels the need to mark it out here in space anyway.

Still. Keith hasn’t woken up yet, and Shiro isn’t sure how bad it is because he can’t measure how long it’s been.

It hurts too much to ask any of the others.

~~~

Allura’s on the viewscreen on the command deck talking to the planet below them. The yellow queen is the only one in view, which seems unsettling but oddly fitting. If Shiro feels alone, it makes sense that someone else is, too. 

“And you haven’t had any more problems?”

“We have not,” the yellow one assures her. “And you need not worry about us. Fighting comes and goes. We appreciate your diligence to becoming our allies, but it has likely been settled by now.”

Her smile is sharp and a little nasty. Shiro wonders if the blue one went out to fight. Both queens seem like the type. He wonders if they take turns fighting and minding the castle. It seems sensible.

They’ve already asked about the poison, although it’s difficult to translate effects and antidotes across separately-evolved species. 

“Shiro?”

Shiro freezes, wondering if he’s thought about Keith for so long he’s imagining him.

“Shiro,” the voice repeats more firmly. Allura looks to the side, beams, and looks back to the viewscreen. “Of course, Your Radiance. As you can see, our last paladin is up and well again.”

Shiro finally turns from his place behind and to the side of Allura to see Keith, alive if unsteady, in the torn up clothes he’d been in during the fight, stripped of his armor. It was probably too bulky to comfortably walk in when he’s this week. 

His mouth is almost too dry to choke out words. He settles on one. “Keith?”

Keith spreads out his arms, and Shiro goes running, stopping a bare foot away to keep from knocking into him. “Keith,” he whispers, and wraps him up in a hug, bodies as close as they can comfortably smush them. Shiro drops kisses on Keith’s hairline. “You’re alright.”

“You don’t get a better recovery than those pods,” he says, not moving an inch in Shiro’s arms. “I’d have been in a hospital for months, probably, after getting that fucked up back on Earth.”

“Hah.”

“Keith!” Lance shouts, skidding into the command deck. Shiro finally takes a step back to let him hug Keith, and stays a step away as Hunk and Pidge follow hot on his heels, Coran trotting up shortly after Pidge has gotten her turn wrapping Keith up. They’re all grinning, even Keith. Shiro might burst from a happy kind of relief.

“Thank you again, Your Radiance,” Allura intones again before the transmission cuts out. Her shoulders slump for a brief second before she walks over to them and studies Keith. Her smile is slow but heartfelt, and she opens her arms. Keith opens his as well, and she takes the hint and moves forward to embrace him.

Shiro isn’t sure if Keith didn’t want to move to be a dick, or if he wasn’t feeling up to not having a wall at his back. 

He’d rather err on the side of caution when it comes to Keith. 

“You should probably lie down,” Shiro says, pitching his voice to be heard without having to yell. It makes everyone settled down a bit.

He nods. “Probably.” Shiro nods and moves to usher Keith away. The others stay on the command deck, and Shiro feels selfishly glad. He wants a moment with Keith.

Several moments. All the moments. Keith feels the same, lets himself be herded away until they’re out of eyesight, then extends a hand. “C’mere.”

Shiro huddles in close, wraps an arm around him and lets Keith lean against him instead of the cold wall. 

“Take me to your room?”

Shiro nods. “Sure. If that’s what you want.”

“Want to cuddle and fall asleep with you.”

“Oh. That sounds.”

“Cramped? Probably.”

“Like a dream come true.”

“You’re so fucking sappy, Takashi.”

“You’re the one who didn’t die on me.”

Keith snorts. “So that makes us almost even on the ‘almost died but didn’t’ count.”

“I guess. Maybe we should stop making a habit of it.”

“I think you had a point, when you were putting me in the pod,” Keith tells him softly. “I wasn’t supposed to die here. We didn’t get a chance to be really, stunningly happy yet.”

“Happiness in a relationship probably looks like bickering and picking out baby clothes for our friends’ kids.”

“I’m okay with that.”

Shiro presses in the keycode to his room and smiles wistfully. “Matt would’ve been a great dad. I think he wanted kids.”

“Think?” Keith prods gently. 

“There’s . . . a lot I don’t remember these days.” He helps Keith out of his clothes and offers him a clean pair of his own. Keith tugs them on gratefully and sinks into the bed, watching as Shiro strips and pulls on new boxers and fidgets over whether or not to put on a shirt before going without and curling up next to Keith. 

They pull the blankets over themselves and Keith tips his head to touch foreheads. He runs a hand over the scars on Shiro’s chest, first the ones from his chest surgery, then others, spider-webbing out in rips and gouges. Each swipe is reverent, slow. “Tell me about what you do remember?”

Shiro breathes out and begins to talk. His voice is nowhere near as slow as Keith’s hands, his sentences not as methodical. It’s probably all jumbled. 

He talks until his throat is raw, but neither of them are crying, just sharing each other’s breath and body heat. 

Keith tucks his feet between Shiro’s shins at some point, neither of them quite sure who tips into sleep first. 

They wake up in their own time, no sunrise to pull them out unconsciousness, just a soft and slow ascent into the world again, laughing at each other’s bedhead and morning breath.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I have a lot of loose ends, but I'm also very Done with staring at this story. So this is entirely possibly part of a series. Should I ever find inspiration again. It's casual. Feedback is always appreciated.


End file.
